


Passing the Time

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Fluff, Graphic Depictions of Boredom, Living Together, M/M, Oral Sex, Workplace Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 02:03:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20899838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Newt and Hermann are disgraced FBI personnel stationed at an isolated arctic research facility where they monitor deep space for signs of extraterrestrial life.It's a very boring job.





	Passing the Time

“Captain’s log,” says Newt Geiszler solemnly into his dictaphone. “Stardate 90715.19. Dr. Gottlieb has forbade me from using the VCR after my fourth consecutive viewing of John Carpenter’s _The Thing_. Weather continues as normal, though we’re expecting a severe cold snap at eighteen-hundred hours. Still no aliens.”

_Click._ End recording. Newt’s desk chair creaks dangerously under him when he leans back and starts staring at the ceiling. It’s an ugly, gunmetal-gray industrial ceiling. Newt has become very familiar with it over the last three months.

The Oubliette- as Hermann liked to call it- was a highly classified and interminably boring arctic research station. Its purpose was to monitor deep space for signs of extraterrestrial life. Newt had been “promoted” to the Oubliette after a particularly explosive interview on live television, and now he spends his days in a cramped, dirty room full of overheating government computers, drinking canned coffee and waiting for the aliens to show up. It’s simultaneously the easiest and most frustrating job he’s ever had.

Newt shares the research station with only one other occupant- Hermann Gottlieb, software programmer, theoretical physicist, and professional bastard. If Newt had to pick one reason why intelligent life had yet to contact Earth, Hermann was it.

Maybe that's why Newt likes him so much.

Newt leans back farther in his chair and put his boots up on the desk. The grainy surface is littered with coffee rings, scraps of Hermann’s half-finished sudoku puzzles, and cheap sci-fi paperbacks with creased spines. Newt leans back just a little farther and the duct tape holding the seat together gives out. The wheels skid out from under him and he lands hard on his back, gasping.

“Good god, man,” Hermann growls from across the room. His voice sounds very much like he has his face buried in his hands. “I have a _migraine_.”

“Ow,” Newt groans, rubbing the back of his head where it smacked against the floor. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

Hermann, who has an ergonomic desk chair that Newt sorely envies, scoots backwards across the room until he’s close enough to offer Newt a hand up. “Three bloody months of this,” he says. “I believe I’m running out of new things to complain about.”

“Dare to dream, dude. How bad is it out there?”

“It will be impossible for us to leave, not that we were planning on leaving in the first place. Fortunately we’re in no danger of losing power.”

_Out there _makes Newt uncomfortable. He doesn’t like to think about being surrounded by a hundred miles of frozen wasteland in every direction, with a blizzard coming in and no sunlight for another two months. Luckily, their assignment doesn’t require any fieldwork. Just a lot of staying indoors and playing increasingly complex games of Jenga with a partner who doesn’t know how to gracefully lose. (Hermann makes up for it by cleaning Newt out whenever they play five-card stud.)

“I’m ‘making’ coffee,” says Newt, his fingers sketching air quotes around “making” as he shuffles out into the hall.

Hermann sets the end of his cane against a wall and pushes off, sending his chair flying back to his side of the room. “Get me one too, won’t you?”

“Oh, but of _course, _Mr. Wooster, of _course,_” simpers Newt, typing in the frankly unnecessary access code for the storage room and ducking inside. “And how do you take your coffee, sir?”

Hermann snorts. Newt can hear the sound of typing. “Oh by all means, in a _can,_ dear boy.”

“What a co-ink-y-dink, me too!” Newt exclaims in mock incredulity, returning with two matching cans. He passes one to Hermann and they pop the tabs in unison. Newt’s noticed that a lot lately, that they’ve fallen in sync with each other. It makes sense. Hermann’s the only human being he’s seen in three months.

He’s also the only human being Newt’s likely to see in the near future.

There’s an awareness between them- a mutual understanding. Hermann knows as well as Newt does that no number of motivational posters or late-night chess games will make the Oubliette feel less like a prison sentence. The deafening silence of space grows draining as the weeks turn into months. Sometimes it feels like they’re the only intelligent life in the universe.

A pair of brilliant minds stagnating in the snow. They’d self-destruct without a little all-too-human comfort every now and then. Sometimes all it takes to feel sane is the touch of another human’s skin.

Newt leans his elbow on the back of Hermann’s chair. “Alright, I’ve got it.”

Hermann, who has been typing up a report on the week’s non-existent readings, adjusts his reading glasses with a smirk. “Oh?”

“You killed a man.”

“Really, Newton, you’re not even trying.”

“I think you straight-up killed a guy with math, dude.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

“I’m right and you know it,” says Newt, letting his arm slip down around Hermann’s shoulders.

“No,_”_ says Hermann, and this time there’s a little laugh in his voice that he can’t quite hide. Newt grins to himself. _Score. _“I didn’t bloody well kill anyone and I don’t think they’d send me up _here_ if I did.”

“I’ll figure it out one of these days,” Newt shrugs. He starts massaging Hermann’s shoulders, firmly and regularly, the way that Hermann likes. “It must’ve been something bad. Something worth shoving one of the greatest minds of the age into this goddamn shithole.”

“Last week you accused me of sleeping my way to the top.”

“I accused you of getting _caught _sleeping your way to the top,” Newt clarifies, grinning wider. “Lucky for you, out here, you’re not gonna get caught.”

Hermann gives him a withering look over the brim of his glasses. “I believe that sleeping with you would constitute sleeping _down,_ if anything.”

Newt feels a little shiver of excitement run through him at being so thoroughly condescended to. “That hasn’t stopped you before.”

Hermann hums like he’s considering it, like he hasn’t already made up his mind, and that’s just an _invitation_ for Newt to convince him. Newt leans down and brushes his lips against Hermann’s temple. “Come on,” he murmurs. “It’ll pass the time.”

“It’ll pass the time,” says Hermann drily, but he leans back into Newt’s hands. “How seductive.”

Newt nuzzles against him a little harder and kisses his temple, then his cheek. Hermann groans a little and sits a little straighter in his seat, letting Newt slide his hand down his chest and lower. He teases at Hermann’s belt for a moment before working his hand down past his waistband.

“You know,” says Newt, conversationally, “you believing in aliens too really throws off our whole buddy-cop dynamic.”

“Of course I bloody well believe in aliens,” Hermann mutters breathlessly, leaning back against Newt and curling one arm back, trying to touch him. “I’d go mad out here otherwise.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Newt finds what he’s looking for and wraps his hand around it, stroking once, firmly, base to tip. “That’s like having two Mulders. You can’t have two Mulders, dude. Someone’s got to be the Scully.”

“Wh-what the actual _hell_ are you talking about,” Hermann breathes, stammering slightly as his eyes fall closed.

“Mmm, look at that,” Newt murmurs nonsensically, delighted by the feeling of being able to _give_ this. A moment of relief from the interminable boredom of their lives. “Look at this. Look at you.”

He takes his glasses off and leaves them on Hermann’s desk, circling around in front of him to kneel between Hermann’s legs. He’s too eager to get started to bother too much with foreplay. Hermann’s hands start fussing with his hair at once. Good. Newt enjoys being fussed over.

“You should let me do this more often,” Newt breathes, helpless with affection. He nuzzles his lips against the damp outline of Hermann’s cock and grins when the man shudders and grips his hair a little tighter. The monitor behind him beeps slowly, steadily. Newt thinks about how hilarious it would be if he missed an alien signal because his mouth was too full of dick to notice.

He voices this thought out loud to Hermann, mumbles it half-incoherently while he gets his hand around Hermann’s cock again, and Hermann rolls his eyes hard enough to make him wince from the migraine. “Frankly,” he mutters, scratching along Newt’s scalp in that way he knows Newt likes, “I’m far more interested in the intelligent life down here than any up there.”

Newt groans happily and leans in, licking a long, wet stripe up the underside of Hermann’s cock. Hermann shudders at the contact and Newt sighs, stroking with one hand while carefully working out the first drops of precum with his tongue. Hermann’s cock is perfect, it really is. Just big enough to hold, just long enough to make Newt’s voice rasp if he takes him too deep for too long. Newt’s often thought that he lucked out, getting stuck with this particular research partner. For many reasons, this one among the most pleasant.

At least Hermann enjoys his company, even if he pretends otherwise. At least Hermann’s willing to listen to Newt’s shitty indie music, as long as Newt’s willing to try his hand at Hermann’s bizarre virtual chess games. At least there’s _someone_.

At least Newt’s not alone out here. Under the silent stars, looking down the barrel of a hundred unresponsive loading screens.

Hermann’s head tips back when Newt pays this kind of special attention to his cock- it always does. Newt likes to see him like that, breathing heavily, tense as a wire. He always comes with a kind of choked, breathy silence, as if he’s forgotten that Newt is the only person within a hundred miles who could hear him.

His hips move under Newt’s hand. Newt gives him firm, even strokes, and feels his mouth flood with the rewarding taste of warm precum. His other hand has long since been shoved down the front of his own jeans, stroking himself off. He’s already leaked through his cheap boxer briefs. He can feel it- Hermann’s heartbeat, rabbit-fast, and his own keeping time to match. Newt groans weakly and takes Hermann’s cock deeper, deep enough to swallow wetly around the head, and Hermann lets own a strained whine and he’s _there_.

It’s thick and messy and perfect, and Newt coughs wetly as he tries to swallow it all. He manages, though barely, and leans his head against Hermann’s thigh. His hair is sticking to the sweat on his forehead. He feels exhausted, and hot, but happy. His jeans feel sticky- he’ll have to do laundry again. The world is still a blur without his glasses but Newt doesn’t mind. The fuzziness of his vision matches the soft, blissful fuzziness in his brain. He could fall asleep like this.

“I’m glad I met you,” he mumbles against Hermann’s leg, eyes falling half closed.

He can hear Hermann’s breathing begin to slow as the same blissful fuzziness starts to relax him. His hand is still in Newt’s hair and he leaves it there, stroking idly. “So am I,” Hermann admits weakly, but Newt can hear the smile. “You’ve been a very accommodating research partner.”

Newt barely stifles a snort. “I could’ve been partnered up with _any _asshole.”

“Any Scully.”

“But it had to be you,” Newt tips his head up a little, just enough to look Hermann in the eye. “I’m gonna get it out of you, one way or another. What you’re in for.”

Hermann smiles. “Maybe I wanted to be here.”

“Yeah,” Newt rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

They stay like that for a while, Hermann in his desk chair, Newt slumped down between his legs. They have nowhere to go, and nothing to do. The machines keep scanning. The snow keeps falling.

“Let’s watch a movie,” says Newt, after a while. He glances up at Hermann. “How do you feel about John Carpenter’s _The Thing?”_

“Fine. One more time,” says Hermann, defeated. He runs his hand through Newt’s hair one last time before taking his hand away. “But next time,_ I_ get to pick the film.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points to whoever can tell me what date and time Stardate 90715.19 corresponds to!


End file.
